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Egg Freezing

Planning for the future

Egg freezing involves harvesting, storing and freezing your eggs for later use. It means you can collect eggs during your most fertile years and save them to start a pregnancy when you’re ready.

Men produce new sperm every day but women are born with a limited number of eggs.
The number and quality of a woman’s eggs begin to decline in her mid-30s, making it harder to get pregnant.

  • Birth: Approx 2 million eggs
  • Adolescence: Approx 400,000 eggs
  • Age 37: Approx 25,000 eggs
  • Menopause (51): Approx 1,000 immature (infertile) eggs remain

Many of us are busy studying, working or travelling during our fertile 20s. You may not find the right partner or have enough financial security to consider having a baby until your mid-30s or early 40s. By then, it may not be as easy to get pregnant.

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egg freezing

Benefits of freezing eggs

Freezing eggs may be a good option if you are:

  • Facing health problems that could affect your fertility
  • Not ready to have a baby.

Egg freezing process

1

Hormonal stimulation

  • Usually involves hormone injections for 8-14 days to stimulate your ovaries
  • Tell us if you hate needles – there are other options.
2

Egg collection

  • We give you a local anaesthetic and your IVF doctor extracts the eggs vaginally in a 15-minute procedure.
  • You go home 1-2 hours later.
3

Egg freezing

  • Eggs are transferred to the laboratory and rapidly frozen (called vitrification). 
  • Once frozen, eggs can be stored as long as you wish.

Some women opt for back-to-back egg freezing cycles while others prefer to have a break between cycles. The best approach for you depends on your circumstances and your health.

Any surgical or invasive procedure involves risks. 

The risks of egg freezing may include:

  • Risks common to all procedures such as a reaction to the anaesthetic
  • Risks specific to egg collection such as ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome.

The risks are relatively small and we discuss them with you before you proceed with egg freezing so you can make an informed decision.

egg freezing process

FAQs

Egg freezing may cost:

  • $8,200–$9,000 to harvest and freeze your eggs (Medicare rebates may be available for some patients)
  • $600 per year to store your frozen eggs
  • $3,200–$3,900 to use your frozen eggs to create a pregnancy.

We do our best to keep costs as low as possible. For example, we harvest eggs in our clinic under local anaesthetic. That means you can avoid paying for a hospital admission and general anaesthetic.

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Typically, women choose to freeze their eggs in their early 30s. At this age, you still have a healthy supply of eggs but you’ve begun to realise that you may need to plan ahead if you want to have a baby.

There’s no official egg freezing age limit. However, the number and quality of your eggs decline as you get older. Your doctor will discuss your chances of success to help you make an informed decision.

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We usually recommend 3 cycles of egg freezing to give you the best chance of success.

The older you are, the more eggs you may need to freeze to have a reasonable chance of having a baby.

Once you’re ready to use your eggs, let us know. We’ll talk you through the process, which will usually involve:

  • Defrosting some of your stored eggs
  • Fertilising your eggs with sperm from your partner or a donor
  • Developing the fertilised egg into an embryo in the laboratory
  • Transferring the embryo to your uterus to establish a pregnancy.

Learn more about IVF

Of course, some women don’t use their eggs. You may get pregnant naturally (that’s wonderful!) or you may decide not to have a baby after all (that’s your call). Egg freezing has still achieved its purpose by keeping your options open.

Egg freezing is still a relatively new procedure. There is a growing body of evidence to support egg freezing but there is no guarantee of success.

Success rates depend on factors such as:

  • Your age when you froze your eggs
  • How many eggs you froze
  • Your age when trying to get pregnant
  • Your overall health
  • Any other underlying fertility issues you may have.

Frozen eggs may offer women in their late 30s and early 40s a better chance to get pregnant than they would have using their current eggs.

A large US study from 2022 showed that 70% of women who froze their eggs when under 38 (and defrosted at least 20) succeeded in having a baby. In contrast, just 20% of 40-year-olds undergoing IVF had a baby.

The most common reason for egg freezing is that a woman hasn’t found a partner yet. If that’s your situation, you’re likely to freeze eggs to be fertilised in the future when you have a partner.

People tend to be further along their fertility journey when freezing embryos. Usually, you’ve conceived a child through IVF and have frozen other embryos so you can have another baby later on.

Keep your options open

We are an innovative fertility clinic at the forefront of new technology and techniques. We’re constantly honing our skills so we can offer you the best opportunity to reach your goals.

This includes multi-COS cycles (collecting eggs more than once in a cycle), improving oocyte quality using mitochondrial function and medical approaches to reduce associated medical issues, just to name a few.

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Disclaimer: All information is general and not intended as a substitute for professional advice. Any surgical or invasive procedure carries risks.